testingReflections.com - usability testing

Severity One outage - on a golf course??!!

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:39:09 +0000

I never really realized the parallels between software development and golf course layout. Both have a technical component, and a reliance on usability. The Australian (Golf) Open moves from city to city each year, and has a hiccup every so often. This year they had a five hour outage.

How do you get an outage in golf? While not in the infamous class , this years competition was held at a cliff top course in Sydney overlooking the ocean. Spectacular but windy. A savage wind blowing balls the width of the green had players blowing par just with their putters. A 5.5 hour delay to play was called by which time the wind speed had halved. The outage confused the local players who said those conditions were typical and just “par for the course”. The greens were all very fast, 10.5 based on their stimpometer score, much higher than the 8 recommended by some players before the tournament started. While the golf club staff ignored the advice, they had tried to slow 4 of the faster holes. The rest of the tournament was played sucessfully in windy conditions that kept the flags taut but didn’t move the balls.

CAST 2009 Early Bird Rates Extended until May 1

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:42:40 +0100

The 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2009

Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 13-16, 2009

Serving Our Stakeholders

Opening Keynote by: Dr. Jonathan Koomey

Closing Keynote by: Robert Sabourin & Tim Coulter

Invited Speakers: Mike Dwyer and Kevin Brennan

CAST 2009 Early Bird Rates Extended until May 1

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:36:14 +0100

The 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2009

Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 13-16, 2009

Serving Our Stakeholders

Opening Keynote by: Dr. Jonathan Koomey

Closing Keynote by: Robert Sabourin & Tim Coulter

Invited Speakers: Mike Dwyer and Kevin Brennan

Usable = “used to”? How about progress?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:24:41 +0000

...I’m used to manual transmission, however I agree that automatic transmission is somewhat more useful, but I’m simply used to manual one.
"Used to" is the most accepted oracle for usability testing. If the application seems a lot like any Microsoft application, then it’s usable (despite perhaps they hate Microsoft …). Now, in 2007 Microsoft did a bad thing – changed what we get used to during last 15 years.

Claims testing in New York taxis

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:11:57 +0000

Back in 2001, I was lucky enough to be visiting James Bach’s Satisfice lab for the WHET 2 workshop. The night before, I was talking to James and Cem Kaner, when James showed us the box that some software came in and asked how we would test it. We both responded that we would read the claims on the box and attempt to verify those. I think this was the first time I heard the term “claims testing”. It was during this visit that I also saw an in car GPS system for the first time, in a car full of testers suggesting various tests involving potentially dangerous driving!

I hope no one tries to test some recent claims by a vendor of technology for New York City taxis. They now have GPS installed, as well as some other extras. It seems someone went for a taxi ride recently, found a PC screen mounted on the seat back, clicked past an error message, and did some mischief. They then blogged about it, then it was picked up in the media (via a comment on the blog post). Of course the technology company had to respond, both with a blog comment and to the media. The claims of the technology company include such gems as “ There are extensive contract-required security protocols in place, which have exceeded government and credit card industry standards and have been stringently tested by our internal and external security experts, which fully prevent access to anything other than media content files residing in the taxicab itself. There is no potential for any malicious activity,”.

Should have tested that - supersized iphone bills

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 08:02:19 +0100

[textile]
The media (including the New York Times where I noticed this) is reporting that people's first iphone bills from AT&T are huge, not in cost but in weight. Paper bills for telephone services have grown in the last few years. Technology allows each call to be tracked and included in a bill, so the summary bill of several years ago has typically grown to 5-10 pages listing all the numbers called. The iphone bills have been up to 50 pages, even 300 double-sided pages in one case (but this woman apparently sent 30,000 text messages in a month! Huh? Was this a publicity stunt or some other oddity? She posted the video of her bill to the net and allegedly got several million viewers)

Bert, Batman, Barbie and Process by Policy

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 03:48:06 +0100

In some areas, quality is not negotiable, particularly anything to do with human safety, especially children. You may have read recently that Mattel has had two toy recalls this month. MSNBC quoted Robert Eckert, Mattel's chairman and chief executive, saying the company had "rigorous procedures" during the initial worldwide recall of toys containing lead paint (including many toys for young children like Sesame Street). He added that Mattel would be "vigilant and unforgiving in enforcing quality and safety". He didn’t mention his cash bonus of 2.5 million in fiscal 2006. As David Phillips on seeking alpha.com observes, “Maybe aligning cash incentive compensation to quality assurance will serve as a needed incentive to manufacture non-toxic toys.”

Software Testing Lessons from my Children

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:53:17 +0100

My most recent column has just been posted on TechTarget in which I discuss some of the lessons I‘ve learned from my children about software testing.

********

I had planned an entirely different topic for this month, but I‘m sitting down to write this on Father‘s Day while my sons (Nicholas, age 8, and Taylor, age 4) are napping, and realizing that I‘ve never written about what I have learned about testing from my boys.

Usability at Gap.com

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:17:38 +0100

[textile] The following is from Putting It Together on Just One Page at Gap by Bob Tedeschi, The New York Times Monday September 12, 2005:

...Ms. Johnson said, Gap's sites, which were shut down in late August and reopened to limited numbers of customers over the following two weeks, went far in solving what she called the 'too many clicks' problem.

An opportunity to practice a much maligned area of testing – Usability

Tue, 24 May 2005 07:48:51 +0100

What an opportunity, however there are a few thousand miles and a slight 10 hour time zone difference for me, but if I was already in the area, boy would I step forward and offer myself up for this in Mountain View CA. It even means I could practice a form of testing I have not been that greatly involved for a number of years now.

Lets face it how often do you get the opportunity to be part of something this cool, ok its not like you could claim to be a real google tester, like the master of model-based testing Harry Robinson himself who has migrated from Microsoft to Google's northern site near Redmond, he gets all the cool gigs...guess it is part of what comes with being that good and visible. However what a cool way to get to see the improvements planned for Blogger and understand more of how usability test works, a much mis-understood and unexplored area of testing for those that are involved in that world.

Testing at the movies

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 22:36:06 +0000

[textile]

While at a movie theater over the weekend, I noticed a couple of new self-service ticket machines. They look and function similar to ATMs: select your movie, slide your credit card, and print your tickets. Simple enough.

Inspired by James Bach, while I was waiting for a friend to show up I took a couple of minutes and tried to see what bugs I could find in the system. I'm sad to say I did not find much. I found only three problems that I would qualify as defects, and two issues that I would want to get clarification on before I wrote them up as defects.

Response times... performance & usability testing

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 06:08:39 +0100

[textile]I was asked about response times for web applications and I remembered that Jacob Neilsen had a couple of useful articles on it...

Sometimes, if you aren't given a measurable requirement, it is useful to base your assumptions about your project's requirements on some sort of generic requirement. Jakob Neilsen refers to background materials on Human Computer Interface response times and explores the web-perspective in a related article.

The following explains how different wait-times alter the user's perception and experience...

accessibility resources

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 23:51:28 +0100

[textile]Someone I know was looking for information about **accessibility** of websites and how, in the UK, the Disabilities Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 affects the necessity for organisations to provide accessible web-sites...

There is also legislation in the US (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) that covers this and I dare say in other places too (post your knowledge on testingReflections.com!).